Summary FAM1001F Exam Notes: All Content Covered

1. Media Texts &
Audiences

,Media Texts
Introduction
Definition
• Include various forms of media content
• Newspaper articles
• TV programmes
• Websites
• Films
• That can be
• Reproduced
• Analysed

Textual Analysis
• Used to understand media texts
• Focuses on various elements of the text
• Form
• Content
• Style
• Structure

,Has many possible meanings
Polysemy
 Media texts are polysemic
o Can have many possible meanings
o Open to multiple interpretations

The Encoding/decoding model of communication
Background
 Developed by Stewart Hall
Idea
 Media texts are decoded and interpreted differently depending on the
reader’s
o Cultural background
o Economic standing
o Personal experiences
Results in 3 ways an audience member could read a text
 Dominant Reading
o Reader fully accepts intended meaning
o Views the text as natural and transparent
 Negotiated Reading
o Reader parially accepts the intended meaning
 Broadly accepts the ideas
 But modifies them to relfect their own
 Position
 Experiences
 Interests
 Oppositional Reading
o Reject the reading
o Because it opposes their social position

,Contexts
Production Context
The people involved in creating the text
 Their beliefs
 Previous work
 Comments on the text
Conditions of production
 Aim of the text
 Financial & political Constraints
 Where it was produced
 Factors influencing the text
o Social
o Political
o Historical

Distribution Context
General Idea that texts
 Exist in a social situation
 Are distributed in a specific context
Space
 Specific media space
o Spaces have different
 Implied readerships
 Watched by a certain culture
 Social agendas/aims
 Example
 Teen glamour magazine VS. adult porn magazine
o Influence of other surrounding texts
 Influences the way people look at the text
 Example
 Watching South Park at home VS. Watching it in a
film review lecture
 Wider social space
o Geographically, where it is being viewed
o The dominant culture in that area
o Example
 Zapiro cartoon criticizing Zuma in Soweto VS. Sandton
Time
 Time of day it is intended to be viewed
o Cartoons when adults are at work
o Internet not influenced by this because its global
 Time in history it was produced
o The ideas and discussions of that time are often reflected
o Something could be bland today
 But pushed the boundaries back then

,Audience Context
 Texts can produce many different meanings
o Because they are different people
 Therefore look for the text’s dominant reading
Reception studies
 Study how audiences view texts by analysing how they
o Actively receive texts
o Consume texts
o Interact with texts
The Inscribed Reader
 A receptive member of the target market the text aims to address
o Gender
o Level of education
o Age
o nationality
The actual reader
 The real people who end up interpreting the text
o Not necessarily the people who the creator intended to address
 How they are studied
o Look at how these people interpret the texts
o Engage with them before and after they read the texts by
 Observing
 Interviewing
 Interacting

,Researching Audiences
Ways of studying audiences
Effect studies
 Look at how audiences are directly affected by the media
o With experiments that
 Media viewed as thins that make the audience vulnerable

Reception studies
 Look at how use and interpret media


Areas of audience research
Quantitative audience research
 Looks at the numbers
o How many people view a program

Qualitative audience research
 Looks at how people respond
o Why they like/dislike a program
 Used in reception studies

,Effect of Media on Audiences
Direct Effects Model
Also called
 Hypodermic Model
 Magic Bullet theory of communication
Idea
 Media produced inject/shoot their intended meaning into audiences
 Audience absorbs messages like a sponge
Consequence
 Media radically affect consumers
 Can be effectively used in propaganda
Assumptions
 Audiences accept the intended meaning
 Media producers & consumers have a predictable & asymmetric
relationship

Reinforcement Model
What it does
 Refines the direct effects model
Idea
 Media and social forces work together
 To influence people
 When the media’s message is also being produced elsewhere in society
o Education
o Family
o Religion
Consequences
 Media most effective when reinforcing existing beliefs
 People ignore and resist info
o If it doesn’t fit into their existing belief system

Cultivation
Idea
 Media has a long-term cumulative effect
 Long-term exposure and persistent exposure needed for media to have an
effect
Consequences
 Media cultivates attitudes and beliefs
 Plays a part in socializing people

Desensitisation
Idea
 Long-term exposure to troubling media images can build a tolerance
Consequence
 Viewers become less sensitive & the images become less troubling
 More likely to view these once troubling things as acceptable

, Ways audiences decode/read texts
Proves polysemy
 Shows there are many ways a text can be interpreted
 Therefore proves polysemy
o The idea that a sign can have many meanings

Preferred reading
 Audiences blindly accept the intended meaning
 Don’t question it

Negotiated reading
 Audiences negotiate with the text’s intended meaning
o Only accept some of what is being presented

Alternative/Oppositional reading
 Audiences completely reject the intended meaning